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Avila Perspective, Chap. 70: Golden Boy vs Top Rank, US vs UK and More

Avila Perspective, Chap. 70: Golden Boy vs Top Rank, US vs UK and More
Several riveting battles take place this weekend, two in the American southwest and another in the United Kingdom. Each card presents world title fights that titillate the fancy of pure boxing fans.
Deep in the Coachella desert another world title takes place as WBO light flyweight titlist Elwin “La Pulga” Soto (15-1, 11 KOs) defends against Filipino challenger Edward Heno (14-0-5, 5 KOs) at Fantasy Springs Casino on Thursday Oct. 24. The Golden Boy Promotions card will be streamed by RingTV.com.
The last time Mexico’s “The Flea” Soto entered the ring he upset Puerto Rican slugger Angel Acosta with a knockout in the last round. As we have mentioned many times before, Mexico versus Puerto Rico is a matchup that never fails to provide action and drama.
This time it’s Mexico versus Philippines and though it’s not as prolific, these two countries still get their antlers up when they face each other. Manny Pacquiao really started the ball rolling when he went through a murderer’s row of Mexican fighters in the early 2000s, or did we forget?
Pacman beat Marco Antonio Barrera, Juan Manuel Marquez, Erik Morales, at least twice each and established himself as a legendary fighter. And he’s still fighting.
Heno, 27, fights out of Manila and is making his American debut. It’s also his first confrontation with a Mexican fighter so it should be interesting especially with a world title as the prize.
A couple of other solid fighters highlight the card including Jonathan Navarro a super lightweight from East L.A. who had back to back impressive wins over Damon Allen and Manuel Mendez. Navarro works out of Riverside with Robert Garcia and is moving up the ranks. He fights Levis Morales (17-5-1) in an eight round contest at Fantasy Springs.
Also on the Golden Boy card are Ireland’s undefeated welterweight Aaron McKenna and Mexico’s undefeated super welterweight Raul Curiel.
Doors open at 4:30 p.m. PT and the fights begin at 5 p.m. PT.
Top Rank vs Golden Boy
On Saturday Oct. 26, in Reno, Nevada, the Silver state, former amateur rivals Shakur Stevenson (12-0, 7 KOs) and Joet Gonzalez (23-0, 14 KOs) face off for the vacant WBO featherweight world title. ESPN will televise.
Three years ago Stevenson emerged from the Rio Olympics in 2016 as one of the more electrifying performers on Team USA, but he didn’t win the gold. Gonzalez was one of the American boxers that did not make the team. Both have been very familiar with each other for years.
Gonzalez also has a sister, Jajaira Gonzalez, who competed for the American team going to the Rio Olympics who is good friends with Stevenson. There will be no surprises in this fight. They know each other well.
Stevenson, 22, arrived from the Olympics with blistering speed and height to go with his boxing skills. When he first entered the pro ranks he was all speed and no punch. But that has changed. A lot of amateur coaches like to preach that speed is power. No, it is not. That’s why certain speedy boxers from the amateurs don’t quite make it in the pros.
Lately, the power has arrived and Stevenson has stopped five of his last seven opponents. He can punch.
Gonzalez, 26, always had a pro style and it’s a primary reason he did not make the Olympic team. But in the prize ring he’s evolved into a force, especially after escaping with a win over Mexican tough guy Rafael Rivera a year ago in Los Angeles. It was a pivotal win that made Gonzalez an even better fighter, a fighter with purpose and a tint more meanness in the ring. He’s stopped three fighters in a row including the talented Manuel “Tito” Avila.
This fight is also worth noting for another reason: it’s Top Rank versus Golden Boy and when they put their fighters against each other they usually result in explosive results. How can anyone forget Jose Carlos Ramirez versus Antonio Orozco? Expect the same in this fight.
London Calling
Scottish fighter Josh Taylor (15-0, 12 KOs) meets American slugger Regis Prograis (24-0, 20 KOs) in a battle of the southpaws at O2 Arena in London, England on Saturday Oct. 26. DAZN will stream the title clash early 11 a.m. Saturday morning if you live in the Pacific Coast.
Anytime you put lefties versus lefties expect the fight to end with a knockout. Both Prograis and Taylor are hard hitting southpaws with run-them-over tendencies. Neither is a fancy Dan.
Taylor, 28, looks and fights like he does collections at night for local Glasgow mobsters. He’s not shy about taking blows to give blows. He also can be elusive if he desires, but usually prefers a dog fight. Ask Ivan Baranchyk a Russian fighter who ran into him in Glasgow. The Scottish pugilist out-muscled the muscle.
Prograis, 30, prefers to slug it out rather than box it out. If this were a movie, he would be Doc Holliday in the film Tombstone who says, “I’m your huckleberry.”
The Louisiana prizefighter has ties to Hollywood and is co-managed by director Peter Berg and and actor Mark Wahlberg. Maybe after this fight Berg can remake the Tombstone movie so that Prograis can play Doc Holliday.
This fight has taken several turns before it finally was nailed down.
Surprisingly it has not been received with the excitement it deserves. This ranks up there with Kostya Tszyu versus Ricky Hatton, Oscar De La Hoya versus Shane Mosley, or Miguel Angel Gonzalez versus Julio Cesar Chavez. All were super lightweight or welterweight fights that electrified the fans when they took place.
It’s guaranteed to provide excitement.
Another added factor will be the lefty component. When lefties fight lefties it creates a puzzle that neither are accustomed to facing. Whoever figures out the conundrum –which usually means whoever lands a right hook first– will win the fight.
Both Taylor and Prograis are tough guys. They each have speed, strength and power to end each other’s night with a single pile driving blow.
Don’t miss it.
Hollywood Swinging
The return of Serhii “El Flaco”Bohachuk (15-0, 15 KOs) finds the Ukrainian slugger facing a tough test in veteran Tyrone Brunson (28-7-2, 25 KOs), a Philadelphia super welterweight who has fought elite fighters in the past. They meet on Sunday Oct. 27, at the Avalon Theater in Hollywood, Calif. on the 360 Promotions fight card. It will be streamed on the promotion’s web site and on the Facebook page.
Bohachuk, 24, trains with Abel Sanchez in Big Bear and has quickly proven to be a very solid boxer who can deal with technical fighters, or handle bombers in crazy exchanges.
Brunson, 34, competed in the recent television boxing show The Contender and lost to eventual champion Brandon Adams by knockout last year in Los Angeles. But he has a win over Kermit Cintron so he knows what he’s doing in the prize ring. He also went the distance with Caleb Plant four years ago.
Doors open at 3 p.m. First bout begins at 4 p.m.
Fights to Watch
Thurs. UFC Fight Pass 4 p.m. Tiara Brown (8-0) vs Vanessa Bradford (5-1-2); Mykquan Williams (15-0) vs Tre’Sean Wiggins (11-4-2).
Thurs. RingTV.com 5 p.m. Elwin Soto (15-1) vs Edward Heno (14-0-5).
Fri. UFC Fight Pass 7 p.m. Kendo Castaneda (16-0) vs Stan Martyniouk (20-2).
Sat. DAZN 11 a.m. Regis Prograis (24-0) vs Josh Taylor (15-0).
Sat. Showtime 6 p.m. Erickson Lubin (21-1) vs Nathaniel Gallimore (21-3-1); Robert Easter (21-1-1) vs Adrian Granados (20-7-2).
Sat. ESPN 7 p.m. Shakur Stevenson (12-0) vs Joet Gonzalez (23-0); Mikaela Mayer (11-0) vs Alejandra Zamora (7-3).
Sunday www.360Promotions.us 5 p.m. Serhii Bohachuk (15-0) vs Tyrone Brunson (28-7-2).
Check out more boxing news on video at The Boxing Channel
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Avila Perspective, Chap. 322: Super Welter Week in SoCal

Two below-the-radar super welterweight stars show off their skills this weekend from different parts of Southern California.
One in particular, Charles Conwell, co-headlines a show in Oceanside against a hard-hitting Mexican while another super welter star Sadriddin Akhmedov faces another Mexican hitter in Commerce.
Take your pick.
The super welterweight division is loaded with talent at the moment. If Terence Crawford remained in the division he would be at the top of the class, but he is moving up several weight divisions.
Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) faces Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs) a tall knockout puncher from Los Mochis at the Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, Calif. on Saturday April 19. DAZN will stream the Golden Boy Promotions card that also features undisputed flyweight champion Gabriela Fundora. We’ll get to her later.
Conwell might be the best super welterweight out there aside from the big dogs like Vergil Ortiz, Serhii Bohachuk and Sebastian Fundora.
If you are not familiar with Conwell he comes from Cleveland, Ohio and is one of those fighters that other fighters know about. He is good.
He has the James “Lights Out” Toney kind of in-your-face-style where he anchors down and slowly deciphers the opponent’s tools and then takes them away piece by piece. Usually it’s systematic destruction. The kind you see when a skyscraper goes down floor by floor until it’s smoking rubble.
During the Covid days Conwell fought two highly touted undefeated super welters in Wendy Toussaint and Madiyar Ashkeyev. He stopped them both and suddenly was the boogie man of the super welterweight division.
Conwell will be facing Mexico’s taller Garcia who likes to trade blows as most Mexican fighters prefer, especially those from Sinaloa. These guys will be firing H bombs early.
Fundora
Co-headlining the Golden Boy card is Gabriela Fundora (15-0, 7 KOs) the undisputed flyweight champion of the world. She has all the belts and Mexico’s Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1, 3 KOs) wants them.
Gabriela Fundora is the sister of Sebastian Fundora who holds the men’s WBC and WBO super welterweight world titles. Both are tall southpaws with power in each hand to protect the belts they accumulated.
Six months ago, Fundora met Argentina’s Gabriela Alaniz in Las Vegas to determine the undisputed flyweight champion. The much shorter Alaniz tried valiantly to scrap with Fundora and ran into a couple of rocket left hands.
Mexico’s Badillo is an undefeated flyweight from Mexico City who has battled against fellow Mexicans for years. She has fought one world champion in Asley Gonzalez the current super flyweight world titlist. They met years ago with Badillo coming out on top.
Does Badillo have the skill to deal with the taller and hard-hitting Fundora?
When a fighter has a six-inch height advantage like Fundora, it is almost impossible to out-maneuver especially in two-minute rounds. Ask Alaniz who was nearly decapitated when she tried.
This will be Badillo’s first pro fight outside of Mexico.
Commerce Casino
Kazakhstan’s Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0, 13 KOs) is another dangerous punching super welterweight headlining a 360 Promotions card against Mexico’s Elias Espadas (23-6, 16 KOs) on Saturday at the Commerce Casino.
UFC Fight Pass will stream the 360 Promotions card of about eight bouts.
Akhmedov is another Kazakh puncher similar to the great Gennady “GGG” Golovkin who terrorized the middleweight division for a decade. He doesn’t have the same polish or dexterity but doesn’t lack pure punching power.
It’s another test for the super welterweight who is looking to move up the ladder in the very crowded 154-pound weight division. 360 Promotions already has a top contender in Ukraine’s Serhii Bohachuk who nearly defeated Vergil Ortiz a year ago.
Could Bohachuk and Akhmedov fight each other if nothing else materializes?
That’s a question for another day.
Fights to Watch
Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. Charles Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) vs. Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs); Gabriela Fundora (15-0) vs Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1).
Sat. UFC Fight Pass 6 p.m. Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0) vs Elias Espadas (23-6).
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TSS Salutes Thomas Hauser and his Bernie Award Cohorts

The Boxing Writers Association of America has announced the winners of its annual Bernie Awards competition. The awards, named in honor of former five-time BWAA president and frequent TSS contributor Bernard Fernandez, recognize outstanding writing in six categories as represented by stories published the previous year.
Over the years, this venerable website has produced a host of Bernie Award winners. In 2024, Thomas Hauser kept the tradition alive. A story by Hauser that appeared in these pages finished first in the category “Boxing News Story.” Titled “Ryan Garcia and the New York State Athletic Commission,” the story was published on June 23. You can read it HERE.
Hauser also finished first in the category of “Investigative Reporting” for “The Death of Ardi Ndembo,” a story that ran in the (London) Guardian. (Note: Hauser has owned this category. This is his 11th first place finish for “Investigative Reporting”.)
Thomas Hauser, who entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the class of 2019, was honored at last year’s BWAA awards dinner with the A.J. Leibling Award for Outstanding Boxing Writing. The list of previous winners includes such noted authors as W.C. Heinz, Budd Schulberg, Pete Hamill, and George Plimpton, to name just a few.
The Leibling Award is now issued intermittently. The most recent honorees prior to Hauser were Joyce Carol Oates (2015) and Randy Roberts (2019).
Roberts, a Distinguished Professor of History at Purdue University, was tabbed to write the Hauser/Leibling Award story for the glossy magazine for BWAA members published in conjunction with the organization’s annual banquet. Regarding Hauser’s most well-known book, his Muhammad Ali biography, Roberts wrote, “It is nearly impossible to overestimate the importance of the book to our understanding of Ali and his times.” An earlier book by Hauser, “The Black Lights: Inside the World of Professional Boxing,” garnered this accolade: “Anyone who wants to understand boxing today should begin by reading ‘The Black Lights’.”
A panel of six judges determined the Bernie Award winners for stories published in 2024. The stories they evaluated were stripped of their bylines and other identifying marks including the publication or website for which the story was written.
Other winners:
Boxing Event Coverage: Tris Dixon
Boxing Column: Kieran Mulvaney
Boxing Feature (Over 1,500 Words): Lance Pugmire
Boxing Feature (Under 1,500 Words): Chris Mannix
The Dixon, Mulvaney, and Pugmire stories appeared in Boxing Scene; the Mannix story in Sports Illustrated.
The Bernie Award recipients will be honored at the forthcoming BWAA dinner on April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in the heart of Times Square. (For more information, visit the BWAA website). Two days after the dinner, an historic boxing tripleheader will be held in Times Square, the logistics of which should be quite interesting. Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney, and Teofimo Lopez share top billing.
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Mekhrubon Sanginov, whose Heroism Nearly Proved Fatal, Returns on Saturday

To say that Mekhrubon Sanginov is excited to resume his boxing career would be a great understatement. Sanginov, ranked #9 by the WBA at 154 pounds before his hiatus, last fought on July 8, 2022.
He was in great form before his extended leave, having scored four straight fast knockouts, advancing his record to 13-0-1. Had he remained in Las Vegas, where he had settled after his fifth pro fight, his career may have continued on an upward trajectory, but a trip to his hometown of Dushanbe, Tajikistan, turned everything haywire. A run-in with a knife-wielding bully nearly cost him his life, stalling his career for nearly three full years.
Sanginov was exiting a restaurant in Dushanbe when he saw a man, plainly intoxicated, harassing another man, an innocent bystander. Mekhrubon intervened and was stabbed several times with a long knife. One of the puncture wounds came perilously close to puncturing his heart.
“After he stabbed me, I ran after him and hit him and caught him to hold for the police,” recollects Sanginov. “There was a lot of confusion when the police arrived. At first, the police were not certain what had happened.
“By the time I got to the hospital, I had lost two liters of blood, or so I was told. After I was patched up, one of the surgeons said to me, ‘Give thanks to God because he gave you a second life.’ It is like I was born a second time.”
“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have happened in any city,” he adds. (A story about the incident on another boxing site elicited this comment from a reader: “Good man right there. World would be a better place if more folk were willing to step up when it counts.”)
Sanginov first laced on a pair of gloves at age 10 and was purportedly 105-14 as an amateur. Growing up, the boxer he most admired was Roberto Duran. “Muhammad Ali will always be the greatest and [Marvin] Hagler was great too, but Duran was always my favorite,” he says.
During his absence from the ring, Sanginov married a girl from Tajikistan and became a father. His son Makhmud was born in Las Vegas and has dual citizenship. “Ideally,” he says, “I would like to have three more children. Two more boys and the last one a daughter.”
He also put on a great deal of weight. When he returned to the gym, his trainer Bones Adams was looking at a cruiserweight. But gradually the weight came off – “I had to give up one of my hobbies; I love to eat,” he says – and he will be resuming his career at 154. “Although I am the same weight as before, I feel stronger now. Before I was more of a boy, now I am a full-grown man,” says Sanginov who turned 29 in February.
He has a lot of rust to shed. Because of all those early knockouts, he has answered the bell for only eight rounds in the last four years. Concordantly, his comeback fight on Saturday could be described as a soft re-awakening. Sanginov’s opponent Mahonri Montes, an 18-year pro from Mexico, has a decent record (36-10-2, 25 KOs) but has been relatively inactive and is only 1-3-1 in his last five. Their match at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, California, is slated for eight rounds.
On May 10, Ardreal Holmes (17-0) faces Erickson Lubin (26-2) on a ProBox card in Kissimmee, Florida. It’s an IBF super welterweight title eliminator, meaning that the winner (in theory) will proceed directly to a world title fight.
Sanginov will be watching closely. He and Holmes were scheduled to meet in March of 2022 in the main event of a ShoBox card on Showtime. That match fell out when Sanginov suffered an ankle injury in sparring.
If not for a twist of fate, that may have been Mekhrubon Sanginov in that IBF eliminator, rather than Ardreal Holmes. We will never know, but one thing we do know is that Mekhrubon’s world title aspirations were too strong to be ruined by a knife-wielding bully.
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